Re:Regrets, I've had a few.
on
CS vs CIS
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· Score: 2
A degree in a very theoretical course such as math/physics tends to make the harder CS material a tad easier to absorb
Sure, and I'd even assert vice-versa; if I had to, I could probably pick up a significant amount of, say, number theory, based on my foundation of CS and physics.
But you're definitely stepping into a classroom to get that math degree. I don't think many people just out of high school, or people who majored in "computers for MBA-wannabes", no matter how intelligent, could pick that sort of stuff up on their own.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I'd argue in a heartbeat that the EE or ECE doing heavy DSP or embedded microcontroller work is doing much more advanced work than the CS major working on his PC;while the length of the code may be smaller, it requires a more indepth knoweldge of the hardware that you're working on
A fair point. though I'd dispute that it's more advanced. I guess it's like arguing which is a greater feat of mechanical engineering, a fine spring-driven pocketwatch or a massive suspension bridge. As you say, different goals and methods.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Bump yourself up by another factor of 10 and go into engineering...Electrical, Mechanical, Aerospace.
Nearly all of those programs will make you do programming, plus you'll get deep immersion into statics and dynamics
But how much compiler theory, or algorithm analysis, will you get? You'll get some programming, but not Real Computer Science. Yes, most engineers (and physicists) can program, probably better than MIS/CIS majors, but it's rare for them to hit the level of true coding craftsmanship. (Of course, that may be because they're crippled by having to learn FORTRAN. B-) )
Now, taking some classes in engineering or physics on top of a CS degree is good exercise for the mind. I actually tried to do a double degree in CS and physics, until my junior year when I was taking operating systems (which in addition to the theory, had us writing device drivers and process schedulers) and theoretical mechanics (where I suddenly found that I did not have the grasp on differental equations I needed) at the same time. My brain melted and poured out my ears, and I decided that this was no longer fun.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Regrets, I've had a few.
on
CS vs CIS
·
· Score: 2
I disagree, I find it much easier, more rewarding, and more FUN to do it on your own than following a cirriculum.
If you can learn about things like complexity theory and compiler construction on your own - I don't mean how to use lex and yacc, I mean if you can pick up the Dragon Book and understand it without stepping into a classroom - then you're a supergenius, and you might as well go to school and get a diploma to increase your marketability.
(Hell, get two or three if you're that smart.) It'll be no sweat for you, and a good investment of some money (the un-degreed seem to hit a definite ceiling).
If all you want to learn is how to program in C or Perl or whatever language is popular this month, you can probably pick it up on your own. Sure, you'll develop all sorts of bad habits and write crappy code, but you can get a job. Someone will come along behind you and clean up your messes. Or not, but you'll still get paid.
But if you're not a supergenius, and you'd like to really understand how things work and be able to craft truly fine code - to be more than just a code monkey, but a real artisan - there's no substitute for a few years of studying CS.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The SF-favorite Cryptonomicon features an excellent discussion on the nature of gods, about how certain patterns of human existance repeat throughout different cultures:
"If you think of the Greek gods as real supernatural beings who lived on Mount Olympus, no. But if you think of them as being in the same class of entities as the Root Rep [a mental representation or model of the person Enoch Root], which is to say, patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world, then yes. Suddenly, Greek gods can be just as interesting and relevant as real people. Why? Because, in the same way as you might encounter another person with his own Root Rep so, if you were to have a conversation with an ancient Greek person, and he started talking about Zeus, you might - once you got over your initial feelings of superiority - discover that you had some mental representations inside your own mind that, though you didn't name them Zeus and didn't think of them as a big hairy thunderbolt-hurling son of a Titan, nonetheless had been generated as a result of interactions with entities in the outside world that are the same as the ones that cause the Zeus Representation to appear in the Greek's mind. And here we could talk about the Plato's Cave thing for a while - the Veg-O-Matic of metaphors - it slices! it dices!"
Just put Santa in the same class with Zeus.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
People who engage in high risk behavior will die out. Those that avoid that behavior will take their place. I'm not saying
that anyone "deserves" to get AIDS, just that natural selection is not limited to genetic traits.
But there's no gene that codes for "uses a condom". Parents don't pass the trait "don't share needles" on to their offspring. Sorry, but there's no natural selection going on in the scenario you cite.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Because Montgomery County now has this new anti-business law, fewer companies will
relocate there.
Or maybe because Montgomery County now has this new pro-labor law, more skilled workers will relocate there. (Montgomery County has a huge concentration of high tech businesses along the I-270 corridor, and is IIRC the richest county in Maryland.) This would provide the incentive for more companies to relocate there - or better yet, having those worked around would lead to them getting together and starting their own companies.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You have a choice. "Just Say No". If you lose the job, fine, there are other jobs out there. If you don't say no, then don't bitch and moan when you're a second class citizen as a result.
Damn straight. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from recruiters on my statement against drug testing on my
resume site. Unfortuntely, many people simply don't have the range of job choices that skilled computer professionals have today.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
In a market place, it doesn't work. You do not, in fact, have a "solid piece of wood in your hands" -- if you don't give people what they want and what they believe to be most useful, they will go elsewhere.
As is often the case, what people believe they want and what they really want are two different things. (Consult any Zen master, or software requirements analyst, for further enlightenment.) It can take some forceful education and interrogation to get people to realize this and tell you what they truly want and need.
People working or large documents need tools and formats that focus on document structure. A bunch of very smart people looked deeply into the problem years ago and came up with the idea of markup languages.
If you want to displace.doc as a standard, you have to be willing to give people the tools they want to use, and not the tools you think they should use.
Actually.doc got to be a de-facto "standard" exactly because managers gave their employees the tool the manager thought they should use.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Funny, it's exactly because I want to get things done - not reboot my system five times a day, or not deal with bloated software that buries the things I want six level deep in menus while keeping a dancing paperclip on top - that I use Linux.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There's a running joke at my office on my constant threats to start doing all wordprocessing in HTML,
Why leave it as a joke? Last contract I had, I wrote up all my intra-team proposals and documents in HTML. (These were, I should note, short documents, three or four printed pages tops, so lack of large-structure layout wasn't a problem.) Didn't have to leave the comfort of my Emacs window, didn't have to worry that they'd be unreadable two years from now when M$-Word was no longer backwards-compatable, didn't have to deal with dancing paperclips or crashing Macs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The whole document writing process has to be as transparent as selecting fonts, size, justification, etc. with a simple mouse clic on an icon or scrolling menu.
No. First, we start with unlearning past mistakes. It is often handly to have nice, solid piece of wood in your hands at this point, as we teach "You do not want to change fonts and sizes. You want to think about your document's structure and mark it up accordingly."
Yes, we don't have to beat that into "the average John and Jane Doe" or "the average secretary" who just wants to type up a one page letter, but when people are creating real documents structure should be in the front of their minds. Otherwise they're fscked from the start, regardless of technology choices.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
This means that they can probably only do damage through thermal effects, but half a watt isn't much heat..
No, it's not much heat, but EM waves also induce electrical currents and make polar molecules line up in interesting way, which might (or might not) have unpleasant biological effects.
Also, you confuse energy and power. Power is the rate of energy.
You're quite correct. I was using "power" informally, but should not have done so in this context. "My bad", as the kids say, and I apologize to all my physics teachers. B-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Those half's wouldn't have been divided on party lines, would they?
Largely, yes. So what? I'm independant, have been since I first registered.
If you saw the recent election debacle as anything more than just a power struggle initiated by the Democrats and won by the Republicans, you're just being partisan and/or naive.
I'm not partisan, I despise both Bush and Gore. I think it's naive to not realize and acknowledge what this partisan power struggle has done to democracy - i.e., stuck a big knife between its ribs.
Additionally, we don't live in a democracy. Get over it.
No, but we do live (or used to) in a constitutional democratic republic. Democracy is one of the fundamental principals of our system.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Candiates vie for office. The outcome is in doubt, so they go to court for recounts. The courts deny that.
Loser concedes. Winner gets stuck with the job.
Then came the court actions, where in the end the Supreme Court (including two justices with blatant conflicts of interest, who were therefore required to recuse themselves and did not) made a ruling for Bush not based in law, fact, or logic.
Bush lost the popular vote, he almost certainly lost the Florida vote, but he won with his brother's cronies and with his daddy's pals on the Supreme Court. The big shame is that in their (understandable) anti-Gore sentiment, many Bush supporters have backed this destruction of democracy.
Welcome to the end of the American Century.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Well, let's see. Were they phones? Yes. Where they portable? Yes. Did they use celluar technology? Yes. Golly, I think we can indeed call them portable phones, even cellular phones if you like.
If the backround radiation is more damaging/higher power than what cell phones produce...
The whole point is that lower power may not indicate less damaging when considering long-term cumulative effects. No question but that some cosmic ray muon zapping through you has more power than a photon from your cellphone, but you get a lot more of those photons and they interact with your tissues very differently. Long-period low-frequency EM exposure and periodic exposure to single high-energy particles are incommensurable quantities. We cannot make any conclusions about the former based on our knowledge of the latter.
Note that I'm not saying that evidence for cell-phone cancer is there, or not there, only that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
A hundred or so people die every year by having their beds collapse on them or through some other mechanical failure while sleeping.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Given that it takes 10 - 15 years
for cancer to develop, any studies that do find a correlation between cell phone usage must be crap, since
cell phones haven't been around that long.
Funny, my first programming job was at a company that did consulting in the cell phone industry. That was 10 years ago. Yeah, every self-important yuppie scumbag didn't yet have one attached to his or her ear, but they were around.
Cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation at lower power levels. Compare this to the natural radioactivity and cosmic radiation which you're constantly exposed to (which is certainly ionizing).
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two. It's like trying to compare the immediate and obvious effects of being shot in the head with a bullet with the subtle cummulative effects of repeated head contact in sports - the former is obviously a Bad Thing, the latter can be harmless but there's definitely a danger level. Figuring out what that danger level is can be tricky.
Now, without any reliable evidence to suggest a significant risk, why should we be concerned about cell phones?
Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
People are the product of their environment and heridity. Advertizing is all about controlling environment.
There is no such thing as "manipulating" people to buy a product.
If that were so, then there'd be no way to manipulate people to political or cultural actions. History proves otherwise. Good propaganda, from Common Sense to Mein Kampf to the spinning of Gulf War I to the big lie that George W. Bush has a legitimate claim on the presidency, has been a huge factor in shaping the world we live in.
You can't choose whether on not to be manipulated. If you a smart, lucky, and aware, you can choose (to some degree) how and by whom you are manipulated.
Go on, try to sell me something. I
can refuse to buy anything you're selling because I have a will.
And right now, some Madison Avenue sucker-of-Satan's-cock is filing you under the "anti-advertising" demographic. "He says he's too smart and willful to be manipulated. So we'll do a campaign that plays on that, like those 'Image is nothing' Sprite ads but about twenty IQ points higher, play like we're giving him straight facts to make a logical decision (but of course we spin
them our way) but put it in a framework that congratulates him on his logic for making the `right choice', which of course is us..."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There seems to be a slashdot mentality that all advertising is inherently wrong, and it is moral to take any
steps to nullify any advertising that you may see.
It's not a/. mentality, but it's one I'd agree with. Gotta go with the late lamented Bill Hicks on this one:
By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill
yourself.
No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds.
Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do
what you can.
Kill yourself.
Seriously though, if you are, do.
Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you
are Satan's little helpers.
Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things
good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going
to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming.
You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You
are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to
save your fucking soul, kill yourself.
Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's
doing a joke... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe,
fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't
care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations.
Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too,
"Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing
dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous
indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling
that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a
good thing."
Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags!
Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this
planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant
market, Bill's very bright to do that."
God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
"Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market -
look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we
play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..."
How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies
at night, don't you?"
"What didya do today honey?"
"Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now,
goodnight." [snores] "Yeah we just said you know is your baby
really too loud? You know," [snores] "Yeah, you know the mums
will love it." [snores]
Sleep like fucking children, don't ya, this is your world isn't it?
Maybe 10% of advertizing is actualy useful and informative to customers...90% is all about psychological manipulation, using techniques no different than the propagandists of Stalin, Hitler, or a dozen third-world wannabes.
I think that this is not correct. I think that advertising is fundamental to the way that the internet has grown during the previous few years
I think you're making my argument for me. Bunch of greed-heads consuming bandwidth with shiny no-content sites designed to mesmerize the masses into continued consumption...never mind the psychological, social, or ecological costs, just keep those dollars moving. Feh.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The problem is that these flaws become accepted as part of the religion: Since they're part of holy Unix, they must be right. But they're not.
They're not accepted as right so much as accepted as part of a package that, taken as a whole, is the best we've got.
Think of it as evolution in action. "I don't think that the design of the human body is right - look at the knees, and the back. Ridiculous to adapt quadrapedal parts to a bipedal stance. And that brain - a space-faring species layered on top of a core from a fish! Ha! But it's easier to work with what we've got than to go back to the protocell level and do a redesign from there."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I care about them so much that I beleive they should be directed in useful and appropriate directions.
Every tool reaches a level of development after which no further development is necessary or usefull. A framing hammer made today is essentially the same as a framing hammer made twenty years ago because there's no useful improvement to be made. A head machined to a nanometer's accuracy or a handle make of some wacky wundermaterial would not make my hammer any more useful to me.
Instead, progress goes into a different kind of tool. My wood and metal hammer is fine for my occasional homeowner projects, but someone with more carpentry ambition would also have a high-tech nailgun.
Same with computers. There comes a point where the typical consumer just doesn't need any more power. That's why you can still find new P-90 systems being sold - for a personal net access/word processing box, that's enough. There are many people who are no more interested in playing Quake III or doing video editing on their PC than I am in building an addition to my house as a DIY project.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
What the heck
would they do, put meters on everybody's mail client?
They could institute severe civil and criminal penalties for unauthorized computer access (i.e., using an open mail relay without permission) and for fraudulent misrepresentation and damage to reputation (faking headers and addresses). That would take care of 90% of spam. Blacklists of ISPs that permit spamming would take care of most of the rest.
I'm surprised that more ISPs don't track down and sue spammers who fake headers. I'd gladly hunt and disembowel any slime who faked spam headers to look like it was coming from one of my domains. (I'd just go to small claims court, but someone like Verizon could put their stable of high-power lawyers to good use and crush the spamming bastards like the cockroaches they are.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
But you're definitely stepping into a classroom to get that math degree. I don't think many people just out of high school, or people who majored in "computers for MBA-wannabes", no matter how intelligent, could pick that sort of stuff up on their own.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Now, taking some classes in engineering or physics on top of a CS degree is good exercise for the mind. I actually tried to do a double degree in CS and physics, until my junior year when I was taking operating systems (which in addition to the theory, had us writing device drivers and process schedulers) and theoretical mechanics (where I suddenly found that I did not have the grasp on differental equations I needed) at the same time. My brain melted and poured out my ears, and I decided that this was no longer fun.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
If you can learn about things like complexity theory and compiler construction on your own - I don't mean how to use lex and yacc, I mean if you can pick up the Dragon Book and understand it without stepping into a classroom - then you're a supergenius, and you might as well go to school and get a diploma to increase your marketability. (Hell, get two or three if you're that smart.) It'll be no sweat for you, and a good investment of some money (the un-degreed seem to hit a definite ceiling).
If all you want to learn is how to program in C or Perl or whatever language is popular this month, you can probably pick it up on your own. Sure, you'll develop all sorts of bad habits and write crappy code, but you can get a job. Someone will come along behind you and clean up your messes. Or not, but you'll still get paid.
But if you're not a supergenius, and you'd like to really understand how things work and be able to craft truly fine code - to be more than just a code monkey, but a real artisan - there's no substitute for a few years of studying CS.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The SF-favorite Cryptonomicon features an excellent discussion on the nature of gods, about how certain patterns of human existance repeat throughout different cultures:
Just put Santa in the same class with Zeus.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
People working or large documents need tools and formats that focus on document structure. A bunch of very smart people looked deeply into the problem years ago and came up with the idea of markup languages.
ActuallyTom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No. First, we start with unlearning past mistakes. It is often handly to have nice, solid piece of wood in your hands at this point, as we teach "You do not want to change fonts and sizes. You want to think about your document's structure and mark it up accordingly."
Yes, we don't have to beat that into "the average John and Jane Doe" or "the average secretary" who just wants to type up a one page letter, but when people are creating real documents structure should be in the front of their minds. Otherwise they're fscked from the start, regardless of technology choices.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You're quite correct. I was using "power" informally, but should not have done so in this context. "My bad", as the kids say, and I apologize to all my physics teachers. B-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Then came the court actions, where in the end the Supreme Court (including two justices with blatant conflicts of interest, who were therefore required to recuse themselves and did not) made a ruling for Bush not based in law, fact, or logic.
Bush lost the popular vote, he almost certainly lost the Florida vote, but he won with his brother's cronies and with his daddy's pals on the Supreme Court. The big shame is that in their (understandable) anti-Gore sentiment, many Bush supporters have backed this destruction of democracy.
Welcome to the end of the American Century.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Note that I'm not saying that evidence for cell-phone cancer is there, or not there, only that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Funny, my first programming job was at a company that did consulting in the cell phone industry. That was 10 years ago. Yeah, every self-important yuppie scumbag didn't yet have one attached to his or her ear, but they were around.
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two. It's like trying to compare the immediate and obvious effects of being shot in the head with a bullet with the subtle cummulative effects of repeated head contact in sports - the former is obviously a Bad Thing, the latter can be harmless but there's definitely a danger level. Figuring out what that danger level is can be tricky. Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You can't choose whether on not to be manipulated. If you a smart, lucky, and aware, you can choose (to some degree) how and by whom you are manipulated.
And right now, some Madison Avenue sucker-of-Satan's-cock is filing you under the "anti-advertising" demographic. "He says he's too smart and willful to be manipulated. So we'll do a campaign that plays on that, like those 'Image is nothing' Sprite ads but about twenty IQ points higher, play like we're giving him straight facts to make a logical decision (but of course we spin them our way) but put it in a framework that congratulates him on his logic for making the `right choice', which of course is us..."Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Or Wanye's World II:
Garth:"Hey. That's a Unix book." (pointing at Garthette's copy of Steven's Unix Network Programming.
Garthette: Yeah.
Garth: Cooool.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Think of it as evolution in action. "I don't think that the design of the human body is right - look at the knees, and the back. Ridiculous to adapt quadrapedal parts to a bipedal stance. And that brain - a space-faring species layered on top of a core from a fish! Ha! But it's easier to work with what we've got than to go back to the protocell level and do a redesign from there."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Every tool reaches a level of development after which no further development is necessary or usefull. A framing hammer made today is essentially the same as a framing hammer made twenty years ago because there's no useful improvement to be made. A head machined to a nanometer's accuracy or a handle make of some wacky wundermaterial would not make my hammer any more useful to me.
Instead, progress goes into a different kind of tool. My wood and metal hammer is fine for my occasional homeowner projects, but someone with more carpentry ambition would also have a high-tech nailgun.
Same with computers. There comes a point where the typical consumer just doesn't need any more power. That's why you can still find new P-90 systems being sold - for a personal net access/word processing box, that's enough. There are many people who are no more interested in playing Quake III or doing video editing on their PC than I am in building an addition to my house as a DIY project.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
They could institute severe civil and criminal penalties for unauthorized computer access (i.e., using an open mail relay without permission) and for fraudulent misrepresentation and damage to reputation (faking headers and addresses). That would take care of 90% of spam. Blacklists of ISPs that permit spamming would take care of most of the rest.
I'm surprised that more ISPs don't track down and sue spammers who fake headers. I'd gladly hunt and disembowel any slime who faked spam headers to look like it was coming from one of my domains. (I'd just go to small claims court, but someone like Verizon could put their stable of high-power lawyers to good use and crush the spamming bastards like the cockroaches they are.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/